In the 19th century it was estimated that one in four cowboys was black, but you would never know that by reading and watching western books and films. This canon served as an act of cinematic and literary nationalism, portraying Old West cowboys as white, gruff men of few words and many guns. And when black and indigenous people in particular have been included, the genre has relied on spectacle and romanticization that has demonized, symbolized, or fetishized them rather than telling their rich stories.
But the stories of black cowboys and other marginalized groups in the west are becoming less forgotten. A group of Indigenous, Black, Asian and Latin American filmmakers and writers have begun updating the story of who owns the West and who belongs in the West. The most prominent recent example of this reappraisal is director Jordan Peele’s alien horror film. nopewhich came out last month. (Spoilers ahead.)
nope is a western. It’s not a western homage, nor a nod to westerns, nor a subversion of the western genre. It’s just a western, but one with a modern day black cowboy and his sister at the heart of the story. nope replaces the cowboy’s hat and stirrups with streetwear and his pistols with a fleet of cameras – from smartphones to old-fashioned cranks. It is not a story about a race against death, but about a race against the world’s hunger for spectacle and a race to be rightfully included in history.
in the nope, OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) and his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) are given an opportunity to save their family’s ranch in Agua Dulce, California after their father, Otis Sr. (Keith David), is mysteriously killed by a became a coin falling from the sky. The Haywoods have a rich but ignored history as descendants of the first person caught on camera, a black man riding a horse. (A black jockey was the subject of the first film, but in real life the story has the man’s name erased.) Without their patriarch, the siblings struggle to keep their business afloat, using horses for TV commercials and films in the nearby town Hollywood Train and Wrestle. When OJ and Emerald spot a UFO-like object hovering over their property, they hatch a plan to sell footage of it to the media – what Emerald calls “The Oprah Shot” – and re-enter Hollywood (and Western) history world) to anchor.
After seeing the film, I was curious what some of the non-white writers and critics who have reimagined the western think nope and what it adds to the genre. Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of the western novel 2022 woman of light, is from Denver, Colorado and currently resides in Wyoming. Fajardo-Anstine is a blend of Chicana with Latino and Filipino heritage, and her book is a generational epic based on her own family stories, exploring the history of Indigenous, Filipino, Black, and Chicanoean peoples in Colorado and northern New Mexico. See no Black, Latino, and Asian characters in a western horror film revived Fajardo-Anstine. “I really hope that we are on the cusp of a new movement in Western literature and media,” says Fajardo-Anstine, also referencing the popular AMC series dark windswritten by Native Americans and starring Indigenous actors.
Stephen Graham Jones, the Blackfoot author of the upcoming western horror novel Fear not the Reaper, told me that the awe-inspiring nature of the West is part of what makes the West and the marginalized people who live there. It is also what contributes to outward desires to conquer, to make a spectacle of, to throw dirt on the beautiful. “Non-Indigenous people look at it and they think it’s pretty and they say, ‘I want that.’ he says. Ironically, he points out that he spoke to me on the phone while parked in front of the abandoned Buffalo Bill’s Market and General Store about 20 miles north of Memphis, Tennessee. Buffalo Bill (William Cody) was a white man who exploited indigenous peoples in his Wild West shows, including Lakota resistance leader Sitting Bull, who had to work in these spectacles and lend his image to survive.
It’s not just the fringes of the West who are flattened by this spectacle, but also its landscapes and wildlife. nope subverts the tropes of westerns and alien films by gradually revealing that the mysterious flying saucer is really just a hungry, sensitive animal. OJ and Emerald even give him the endearing name Jean Jacket. Viewers begin to see Jean Jacket as more than an abstraction, and are rewarded with insights into the alien’s anatomy and psyche.
Chinese-American writer C Pam Zhang is the author of How much of these hills is gold, a western novel about two Chinese-American siblings who find themselves on the run in the California hills. The book highlights that Asian Americans, although they have centuries of history in the West, are portrayed in racist Western narratives as contradictory to the myth of the American West and liminal to its history.
Zhang was also a fan of nope. She says it’s dangerous to view the “inherent and terrifying danger” of Western America’s landscapes and wildlife purely as a spectacle, which is conveyed in the film through the contrast between OJ and Justus (Steven Yeun). Justus is a former child actor-turned-owner of a western-style amusement park adjacent to Hayward Ranch, reminiscent of the Buffalo Bill shows. for zhang, nope seems almost like a Greek tragedy and warns of the dangers of hubris. “Characters like Justus die because they underestimate the natural phenomenon of UFOs, like selfie shots in national parks have died in search of a better shot,” she says. “The flattening of the natural world is a matter of life and death.”
But Peele also adds complexity to Justus’ story. Justus himself became a spectacle when he played the adopted Asian child of a white family with a pet chimpanzee on a sitcom called Gordy’s House. His appearance alongside white children is almost seen as a laughable oddity. In a chilling subplot, viewers learn that a chimp playing Gordy was triggered on set, resulting in him killing or maiming almost everyone except Justus, who received a fist bump from the chimp just before animal control shot him dead .
Graham Jones thought Justus’ story was one of the most compelling and scariest. He felt the film said “both child actors and animals are disposable. Jupiter has also been forgotten, which is why he makes his little shows in the desert.” Although Jupiter has been made into a spectacle, he understands that the gaze of the amazed masses is powerful, and he prefers this to extinguishing. Justus really wants to be seen, and he pursues this wish until his death.
If Jupiter had been able to see past the spectacle and understand Jean Jacket’s primary needs—food and shelter—the outcome would have been different. Jean Jacket is not like aliens from past movies. The area that Jean Jacket wants to call his own is relatively small, just a tiny part of Agua Dulce. He is not concerned with domination or human submission; he’s just hungry. Even the deaths of OJ and Emerald’s father are, as Fajardo-Anstine points out, “just a function of eating Jean Jacket” – the coin was eliminated after the flying saucer finished eating some people. Most interestingly, each character could escape from Jena Jacket if they wanted to. Almost nobody in the film is caught until they catch themselves. But everyone is drawn to the spectacle – or rather, what the spectacle can bring them.
“Black people helped shape the American West by respecting the authority of the land, the cattle, and the people who are already there. They gave without simply taking anything from it,” says Tinubu.
Justus and OJ aren’t that different in that regard. They both see something to gain from Jean Jacket. But what allows OJ to survive is his ability to see Jean Jacket as a multidimensional being. Realizing that Jean Jacket will not eat people who avoid looking him in the eye, OJ escapes death. He has the same flair as Justus, but he lacks the hubris. “OJ is a rare character who, aware of his human fragility in a vast western landscape, could care less,” says Zhang.
Aramide Tinubu, a black film critic and entertainment journalist, says this storyline illuminates black people’s long-held respect for western American nature. “Otis and Em learn about the beast and respect its power like the horses they train. Black people helped shape the American West by respecting the authority of the land, the cattle, and the people who were already there. They gave without simply taking anything from it,” says Tinubu. OJ survives by treating both his horses and Jean Jacket as complex beings that require a careful, nuanced approach. It’s a story about animal revenge, but also about the importance of respecting animals and how marginalized people can reclaim their own power and history in the process.
Graham Jones, whose book 2020 The only good Indians is also a tale of animal revenge told through the lens of Native Americans, feels like the western genre is finally realizing that the voices that go with it aren’t just white — that they’re Indigenous, Black, Asian, and Latino are. He says the genre is moving past “this idea of what the Old West was like.”
The West is a battlefield of history and narrative, a place where people go to create the myth of this nation. Something exciting is happening within the Western genre – something that has always happened. Rich stories fight weary old ideas, and marginalized people grab their own cameras and turn them on their own lives and those of those in power. All of this creates flashes and a much more dynamic genre.